McAfee Antivirus

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        Pros

Scored well in malware blocking tests. Network management adds intrusion detection. SiteAdvisor Plus protects from phishing and malicious sites. Very good spam filtering. Low impact on performance. Offers tune-up, secure deletion, encrypted file "vault".

·         Cons

Malware balked one installation in testing. Simplistic firewall. Rudimentary parental control is not browser-independent. In testing, did not remove all detected malware.

·         Bottom Line

Compared with McAfee's antivirus, the McAfee suite adds accurate spam filtering, ineffective parental control, an encrypted file "vault", and enhancements to several existing features. McAfee fans who want all of those additions may choose it; others will go for the feature-packed antivirus or for a suite like Norton that's consistently high-performing.

Avast Antivirus

Developed in the Czech Republic, Avast Antivirus Home Edition offers capable malware detection and faster-than-average scan speed, both of which helped propel the app to the number two spot in our rankings of free antivirus software. Its clunky interface badly needs updating, however.

In AV-Test.org malware-detection tests, the program blocked a respectable 98.2 percent of samples out of a malware "zoo" consisting of about a half-million files. That wasn't enough for Avast to top the best performers, Avira AntiVir Personal and the unranked Panda Cloud Antivirus, but it's still a good showing. Avast didn't do quite as well in proactive-detection tests, which simulate how well a program would fare against new and unknown malware: Its catch rates of 46.1 percent (two-week-old signatures) and 41 percent (four-week-old signatures) put it in fourth place.

The app was relatively nimble at on-demand scans (which you start manually) and on-access scans (which occur automatically when you save or use a file), placing second in each test (behind Avira in both cases). It issued just one false positive (labeling harmless software as malicious).

In disinfection, Avast nearly matched the top performers (Avira and Microsoft Security Essentials), detecting and disabling 90 percent of the rootkits used in our tests. All three apps, however, also left behind Registry entries and failed to reverse all of the changes that the malware had made.

While Avast does well as a malware blocker and remover, it fares poorly as a program that people have to interact with. Its outdated interface has sections that look entirely different depending on whether you're running a scan, checking status, or changing settings. The scanning interface mimics a music player, but you probably won't be singing its praises. Be sure to read the how-to guide that pops up the first time you use the program, unless you enjoy scratching your head and growling at your monitor.

The Avast product is the only free antivirus software in our test group that requires you to register within 60 days to receive a free license key. It's also the only app that scans Web traffic for malware (AVG 8.5 Free's LinkScanner scans Web traffic for the attacks that can presage malware, but not for the malware itself), and it scans e-mail traffic as well.

Avast Antivirus does a decent job protecting a PC from malware, but if you're willing to put up with a less-than-perfect interface (and some ads), you're better off going with Avira's top-notch blocking.

How to Compare Antivirus Software?

It is not an easy task to compare antivirus softwares. When we see any antivirus software, we tend to download them. This is not because we want to download them but this is not because we want to download them but this is because we want to be safe from all the different types of dangerous programs. So while choosing antiviral programs too, we should be very careful and we should try not to choose anyone that comes our way or else it could damage our computer.This means unnecessary antivirus can also disable the functioning of our computer. So be very careful while choosing antivirus. See that the company is well recognised and has the record of curing thousand of programs. If this is seen then oviously which ever program you choose it will give a good result.

Antivirus developers

Frankly speaking there are many and many hackers and virus developers in the world. However lie you tell anyone but you are always under a threat of somethig that you may be attacked by someone and your most valuable daa that is not to be known by others are stole away. This creates a huge problem since people are attacked by various unwanted programs which they dont want to bring in between their work. People are very much disturbed and this  is tried to be solved by antivirus developers. They try to bring solutions to the required user and try to earn from them. Now if all users problems are solved then antivirus programs will be of no use and their business will also ruin. So to increase their business, these antivirus developers themselves create viruses so that they can also create the solutions for their own made viruses. They do not publicize their making of viruses but they themselves publicize the making of antiviruses. This is how the business of antivirus developers are going on. Many sources are included for this research on antivirus developers.

Worms

The term 'worm' here does not mean the creature that is big and can be seen by our eyes like earthworm, tapeworm, etc. but these mean the computer programs that do not destroy data. So if a virus does not destroy data then why to be afraid of worms?


The work of worms is to slow down the operation of the computer. It also slows down the memory of the computer and also slows the operation of the programs whatever being done.